Tag: QandA

YO DAWG so in my earlier question you talked about roll with it. So what about you? If you wanted to go about a fanfic or write your own journey or of a character as a trainer what you do? Would you use the show, the manga, or the games as a template? Or would you create your own and mix and match as you see fit?

Oh god it’s you again

To be honest, I’ve never really thought about writing fan fiction.  Well, I have, but not about a standard “trainer goes on a journey” kind of thing.  Still, I suppose that’s not really what you’re asking.  I think the thing about fan fiction is that it’s quite different from what I normally do here; the whole point is that it’s what you think the world should look like… so ultimately it probably wouldn’t follow either the games or the anime very closely at all.  Anything more specific than that really depends on the demands of the story, I would think.

Is this a request?

If at some point in the past humans and pokemon were not considered separate beings, which essentially makes humans just another pokemon, what types would you say they’re classified as. To me, it could be either normal, fighting, or even psychic if certain claims about the abilities humans possess within the pokemon universe are to be believed. What other pokemon-esque abilities would you say humans possess or at least used to possess?

I’m not sure; I guess I would say that we’re really Normal-types with the ability to learn a few Fighting and Psychic techniques if we work really hard at it (because even the greatest human psychics and martial artists are pretty weak compared to actual Fighting and Psychic Pokémon).  I think the way Koga and other ninja characters are portrayed might suggest that they base their techniques of a variety of Pokémon attacks – Toxic being the big one, which could even be a human technique adapted to use by Pokémon rather than the other way around (which is why all Pokémon can use it).  As Normal-types go, though, we’re pretty boring.  Of course, everything is relative… Fire-, Rock- and Ground-type would probably be astonished by our ability to withstand water!

I think it’s important to bear in mind that humans don’t exhibit many traits which are present in all (or almost all) Pokémon uniformly – Pokéballs don’t work on us, we can’t use TMs, we don’t lay eggs – that last one in particular seems kind of a big deal to me.  The other question that occurs to me is whether Pokémon and humans were ever actually as close as they were in the myths, because the idea of similar closeness between humans and animals isn’t all that unusual in real-word mythology; plenty of cultures have a concept of a mythic age before the rules of the cosmos had been fully set, and you do get animals acting like humans and humans acting like animals in those stories, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t really happen.  There seems to be a big cultural drive in the Pokémon world to portray humans and Pokémon as being basically the same thing, but that doesn’t necessarily make it so…

Yo Yo Yo Pokemaniacal. Has animal fighting implications made you feel awful in pokemon, for example since pokemon look like animals or if you think they are animals despite differences you may think its just animal fighting. A blog named LadyGeekgirl wrote “The Pokémon Problem” on that. Last I checked the blog didn’t have comments but last I saw it was on August lol. And also how is the X and Y plot so far?

Feel awful?  Well, not really.  I’m not sure if you’ve read it, but I have dealt with the subject in some depth in the past – it’s probably the most popular thing I’ve ever written.  Basically it all comes down to how much choice you think the Pokémon have in the matter, and I tend to think the answer is actually “quite a bit.” http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/34093585438/the-ethics-of-pokemon-training

The article you mention – here’s a link, by the way, for other readers http://ladygeekgirl.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/in-brightest-dayish-the-pokemon-problem/ – well… I mean, yes, obviously, the complaints are fair, and I think it’s best if we keep those in mind.  I also think the franchise produces by far its most interesting stories when the developers keep them in mind, and the same goes for fan fiction.  It’s not exactly a clever point, though.  I mean… I don’t think people should get to say “Pokémon portrays violence involving animals” as though it’s a great insight.  Don’t just say it; work with it!

EDIT: Oh, yeah, you asked about X and Y.  Well, I’m not all that far in yet, so I don’t really know.  Still haven’t found out what Team Flare is really all about, or what Lysandre has to do with anything (I mean, I assume he’s important, and the game keeps dropping hints that he’s a bad guy and maybe the leader of Team Flare, but his ethos doesn’t really seem compatible with theirs, so eh?).  I’ll keep everyone posted, of course!

DOUBLE EDIT: People really say “yo yo yo”?

You’ve mentioned before how, in the Pokemon world, no one seems to know how Pokemon breed, which makes professors and breeders seem incompetent. Have you thought maybe that professors and breeders are lying about not knowing? I say this because every single way to experience the Pokemon universe is through the perspective of a 10 year old trainer, a young boy or girl who probably doesn’t know about sex. It would be strange to give random children “the birds and the bees” talk all the time.

It’s more than that, though.  In Gold and Silver, Professor Elm is tremendously excited to hear that Mr. Pokémon is claiming to have a Pokémon egg, because at that point (and there is dialogue elsewhere in the game that confirms this explicitly) no-one even knows for sure that Pokémon hatch from eggs.  Why would anyone be concerned to hide that from a child?

EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, even when you think about the day-care people producing lines like “we don’t know how [the egg] got there, but your Pokémon had it” that’s still bizarre, because why would anyone be uncomfortable telling a child “your Pokémon laid an egg”?  There’s no need at all to mention the sex which presumably preceded it.  Seriously, eggs are, like, the most kid-friendly method of reproduction ever.

There was a joking comic strip that went around about the pokedex entries. Since your character was very young and was filling up the pokedex, then they would be the one to write those entries – and end up with exaggerations because pokemon would just impress them that much.

Continued: “And of course a comic strip from Rare Candy Treatment about “Dexbusters”, who would test pokedex descriptions the same way our Mythbusters would test weird theories.”

I’ve seen both – I don’t think I’m happy to say that something quite so absurd can actually explain what’s going on (I mean, obviously these things were produced with humorous intent), but these depictions might well be close.  I think we should bear in mind that (even if you don’t imagine it actually being written by children on their Pokédex quests) the Pokédex is a field guide for children, not an academic or scientific database.  It probably contains a fair amount of apocrypha, derived from folktale, urban legend, or simple exaggeration, meant to create an impression of what a particular Pokémon is like rather than a scientifically rigorous description.

Question! How do you think that literature and other forms of fiction would have developed in such a ridiculously Pokemon-centric society as the one in the games? Obviously, Pokemon featured prominently in most – if not all – of their ancient myths, but how would storytelling have developed from there? Do you think that similar genres and cliches would exist in the Pokemon world as do in the present-day real world? Would there even be such a thing as a story without Pokemon in it?

Well I don’t see that there’s anything about the Pokémon world that particularly precludes similar narratives and tropes to the ones that exist in our world, although how art and literature deal with Pokémon would presumably vary significantly from one culture to another.  If a culture regards Pokémon as essentially clever animals, then one imagines their literary motifs would develop along fairly familiar lines.  It sort of depends on how willing people are to think of Pokémon as ‘non-human persons,’ and how widely stories that treat them in this way are accepted.  Even then, there certainly have been cultures in the real world that were happy to ascribe free will and agency to animals, and to tell stories that depict them as equal to humans, so I’m not sure the presence of Pokémon per se would prompt them to develop any literary forms that are actually without parallel in the real world.

i am not suer if you answered this befor but is the pc box thing a real thing or just game mechanic

I’m… pretty sure I’ve talked about this because it was important to one of the points I was making in the ‘If I Were In Charge’ series but I can’t really remember how much detail I went into or how explicit I was about it, so…

Basically, I have difficulty with PC boxes because I normally prefer trying to reconcile the games and anime, but the differences in how Pokémon are stored seem to be just too stark.  It seems to me that the two different systems – the PC boxes we use in the games, and Ash’s set-up with Professor Oak in the anime – are best seen as responses to the demands of the different media.  The games need something simple that doesn’t require too much complicated and tedious interaction on the part of the player (whether you like it or not, it has to be admitted that my alternative would be a lot of work for both designers and players).  The anime isn’t comfortable portraying trainers as storing their Pokémon in this comparatively unsettling way, and so produces the narrative of Professor Oak’s huge Pokémon habitats.  I’m inclined to favour the anime as a portrayal of what the creators ‘really think’ and take the games’ version as an abstraction that keeps us from having to think about it too much, but the alternative – that the games represent ‘reality’ (whatever that even means here) and the anime is just a story concocted to make it seem more pleasant – really has equal support here.

You could suggest that both systems are actually in use and that PC boxes are used when the Professors run out of space, or by trainers who just don’t have the special relationship with a Professor that Ash does, but then the question just becomes ‘why wouldn’t the Professors just keep the extras in Pokéballs most of the time’?  Perhaps Pokémon in Pokéballs need to be let out more often for food and exercise than Pokémon in PC storage (which is more of a deeper hibernation)?

This will be my last one from me mate, first of all even if those were jokes, who knows how serious were they. After all many jokes start out as being serious. The writer, Andrew Bridgman, may be was being serious or not. You can’t tell comedic pieces of writing. I’ll tell you this, yeah it was wrong for me to assume you were American. American centric perspective sucks in this global world. I also realize there are far worse controversial games. Perhaps you can make an article on that.

“PS. To that guy who said people largely moved on, I say yes and no. Any animal abuse jokes come up his name [i.e. Michael Vick; see previous question and comments] is always revealed. Even pokemon ones his name pops out here and there. Which makes you wonder selective memory. People tend to forget a lot of terrible actions and deeds, yet they are good at remembering few of those too. Selective bias memory I tell ya. Then again the forums and youtube aint the whole world and bark much louder than its bite”

I do hope they are joking or satirical.  If they’re serious… well, they don’t stand up very well.  You don’t even need to take them point by point; just one comment to each will do it:

On the miserable Pokémon list: This list invariably takes the perspective “what would it be like for us to live this Pokémon’s life?”  It doesn’t explicitly say it, but it does.  Most animals are, in fact, quite capable of dealing with the basic facts of their own biology and having perfectly happy lives despite not being able to live like humans.  I think the most egregious is probably Slugma – why would anyone ever assume that a creature which doesn’t sleep would be tortured by inability to sleep?

On the absurdly powerful Pokémon list: The Pokédex cannot be trusted when it speaks in numbers, superlatives, or absolutes.  Alakazam proves this, because an IQ of 5000 isn’t merely impossible, it actually doesn’t make sense.  High IQs are difficult to quantify because our sample size is so small and it’s so difficult to come up with ways to differentiate between two similarly intelligent geniuses, so any IQ score above maybe 180 is little better than a guess.  ”IQ of 5000” is just a nonsense statement, and demonstrates that the in-universe authors of the Pokédex a) have limited technical knowledge and b) are prone to outlandish exaggeration.